To protect the innocent and/or the guilty, the following may or may not be true~

The Art Explosion cracked open a door in my mind. It showed me that with many people you could make large-scale art on the street in a very small amount of time. Flash Art!

(Photo by Dan Nguyen)

I ride my bicycle everywhere I can in New York. One of my favorite paths is over the Williamsburg Bridge. I like the way you have to work to get to the top. Then you are rewarded with a most spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline on one side and the majestic Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges on the other. You can see the boats in the East River below and colorful people of all kinds pass you on bikes, skateboards and feet. The dialogue of graffiti scrawled all over the ground is as entertaining as it is unsightly. And then, when you pass the peak you get the freedom of coasting all the way down the other side with the wind in your hair and the thrill in your gut.

While flying down the ramp over the years I often imagined a rainbow there below my wheels, a long rainbow that went from the top of the ramp all the way to the bottom and splattered out on the sidewalk below. I thought it would be an awesome thing for people to ride down this rainbow on their way to and from whatever … the idea stuck in my mind.

To paint a rainbow down the ramp would take a team of daring people. People who were agile and quick and unafraid of the repercussions of getting caught. The action seemed much riskier than the Art Explosion because it was on the bridge. But the idea continued to roll around in my mind over time and it evolved into a more modest, more practical 80 ft. rainbow flowing out of a cosmic heart. I slowly started gathering the rainbow ninjas. I recruited them by color over the course of a year or so. So and so agreed to paint the green stripe, another friend wanted to paint purple, etc.

All in all there were about 25 of us: 6 to paint the rainbow, 6 to paint the heart, a handful of lookouts and a small video crew, courtesy of my friend Nathan Austin who filmed the process.

Weeks in advance I purchased 6 battery powered turbo rollers. These contraptions made the whole thing possible. The battery propelled the paint through the roller and the extra was stored in the handle. They allowed us to roll out a wide line of paint 80 ft without needing to refill the roller, saving us a lot of time and the hassle and mess of pouring paint into trays. They worked great.

A practice run on a friends rooftop in Brooklyn to check for kinks and test our timing.

The day of, I spent the afternoon in Tompkins Square park preparing the heart stencil. Later on everyone met up at my place on 2nd st and prepared for the rainbow intervention. We filled the rollers, packed up the stencils and went over strategy one last time. 

I remember being pretty damned nervous. We could not get caught. It wasn’t an option. I wasn’t worried about going to jail. I have always thought that would be an interesting adventure on it’s own. I was mostly afraid of getting my otherwise innocent friends busted. I roped them into this after all.

We loaded up the back of a friend’s truck with the rollers and rolls of vinyl stencils. He sped ahead to meet us at the bridge. The rest of us took off on bikes with backpacks full of spray paint. The lookouts went first, posed as couples on corners and at the entrances of the ramps on both sides of the bridge. Once the bridge was assured empty we zeroed in on the ramp. Everything “GO!" 

Rainbow ninjas in the night (Photo by Nathan Austin)

Adrenaline raced through my body, all the city sounds seemed distant except the sound of my breathing and the "Chhhhhhh” of the spaypaint. The dim, yellow street lights lit our canvas and we began painting in the heart as another six of us took off down the ramp in staggered succession; each one painting an 80 ft long stripe of color.

We were completely finished in 11 minutes. No snags, no hold ups, no police, no problems. It was bewilderingly smooth. My heart beating fast, we packed away the evidence and hopped back on our bicycles, disappearing into the fiery orange sky of the burgeoning dawn. All 25 reappeared one by one at Kellogg’s Diner in Brooklyn where we partook in a glorious victory breakfast.

Spirits were soaring. Waffles never tasted so good.

The “Universal Heart” and the 80 ft. rainbow (Photo by Dan Nguyen)

Almost three years later, the rainbow is still there on the  walking path of the Brooklyn side of the Williamsburg Bridge. I fly down it with nostalgia and a smile every time I go to Brooklyn.

A few weeks after this project followed another action on the bridge. This time a party, a collaboration between my good friend Nathan Austin and I. It was The Third Annual New York Under-Cover Clandestine Errantry You-Might-Get-Arrested Trespassing Adventure Party.

To be continued~